When it was first announced that Halo 3 Beta keys were being included in the retail release of an Xbox 360 game, I rolled my eyes. I assumed that whatever they were slapping that key onto was going to be a crappy bargain basement eyesore. It has been a great pleasure to learn that, maybe, they bundled the Halo 3 key with Crackdown so that more people would be exposed to the simple greatness this game contains. To be sure, the game has deep flaws; not much of a story, a few racial stereotypes, and somewhat unsatisfying boss fights mar the experience. At the core, though, this is a mindlessly fun game that does a lot of things right. If there's a sequel, and there's no reason not to think there won't be, it's good to know that Realtime Worlds has established an extremely solid base for future endeavors. Read on for my thoughts on this superjumping shooter.

Brietech writes "Ever felt like building your own laptop from (almost literally) scratch? This is a microcontroller-based "laptop" built from the ground up from a handful of chips and other hardware found lying around. It runs a self-hosted development environment, allowing the user to write and edit programs in "Chris++" on the machine, and then compile and run them. The carpentry looks like it could use some work, but it's a neat project!"

Croakyvoice writes "Datel has finally released the Games n Music Homebrew cart for the Nintendo DS, this mass market entry level cart features a 128mb Micro SD card and comes with a 25 game CD of the best of DS homebrew games." Games 'n' Music contains everything you need straight out of the box. It even comes bundled with a 25-game CD, offering some of the best games the DS home brew scene has to offer, as well as a video conversion program."

An anonymous reader wonders: "My University has begun a migration of student email services to Windows Live Mail. All students will be forced onto the system by the end of the semester, but it doesn't support POP or IMAP. Because of that limitation, the only freely available mail client it supports is Windows Live Desktop, which is only available on Windows and I'm worried its ads might be vulnerable to malware just like the ones in Live Messenger. I depend on my mail client and I am concerned about this, because we're not allowed to forward our mail but are responsible for information received there from the University and classes, I'm not on a Windows machine, and I don't have the time to regularly check for web-mail, during the day." What are the pros and cons of such a move for a mid-sized or large college? If you were in charge of the communications of a such a university, would you outsource [please note the vendor neutrality, here] your e-mail?

ogar572 asks: "There has been an ongoing and heated debate around the office concerning the definition of what /etc means on *nix operating systems. One side says "et cetera" per Wikipedia. Another side says it means 'extended tool chest' per this gnome mailing list entry or per this Norwegian article. Yet another side says neither, but he doesn't remember exactly what he heard in the past. All he remembers is that he was flamed when he called it 'et cetera', but that 'extended tool chest' didn't sound right either. So, what does it really mean?"

Dotnaught writes "For the past five years, Xcerion has been working on an XML-based Internet operating system (XIOS) that runs inside a Web browser and promises radically reduced development time. To provide developers with an incentive to write for the platform, Xcerion's back-end system is designed to route revenue, either from subscription fees or from ads served to users of free programs, to application authors. Think of it as Google AdSense, except for programmers rather than publishers. Is it absurd to think this poses a threat to Google and Microsoft?"

hedgemage asks: "I work at a retirement home and we have trouble with the cell phones that our nursing and maintenance staff use. The problem is that our nursing home area is built into a lower level that was originally constructed as a fallout shelter in 1960. There's a lot of solid concrete in the walls and ceiling. We have paid out tens of thousands to try and get an on-site mobile to work using NEC Dterm PSII phones, but they have proven absolutely unreliable (not just in the bomb shelter but throughout the campus) and the only solution our telecom provider has is to install several thousand dollars more in transceivers. If we could use ordinary cell phones, it would be ideal for everyone. Is there an off-the-shelf solution that could boost regular cellular signals in our bomb shelter?"

Yvan256 asks: "I've been looking for over 15 years for the Innovation SSI 2001 soundcard. It's a very old and extremely rare ISA card, based on the SID 6581 chip of the Commodore 64. Yes, I am aware of the HardSID (I've got one), but it's not hardware compatible with the SSI 2001 (different method of accessing the SID registers). The SSI 2001 is about the only card missing from my soundcards collection. I am aware of the IBM Music Feature, I have one. It's just not on the webpage yet. Please note, this collection is about the different technologies that came out at the beginning of the soundcards era, not the thousands of SoundBlaster clones that were available (including the Pro Audio Spectrum series). So, if anyone has an Innovation SSI 2001, or know where I could get one, please tell me."

Oneamp asks: "I'm interested in a '500-in-one' type electronics kit. Amazon lists a few, but I've seen some user reviews that maybe they are not all they're cracked up to be. Most of the complaints seem to be of the 'Manual sucks' variety. Nevertheless, I'm sold on the idea. Can any of you, who have had actual experience with any of these kits, recommend a good one?"

An anonymous reader writes "When silicon fails to beat Moores law, maybe dominos can help. This guy has created a half adder in dominos as a proof of concept for domino computation. If he intends to make a full domino computer he's going to need an awful lot of dominos."

An anonymous reader asks: "Microsoft Windows, from 2000 forward (except ME) offers secure certificate and private storage at the OS level in what is called a protected store. Offline, it's encrypted by a combination of the user's password and a session key stored on the filesystem. When the OS is running, the private keys stored are available to the logged in user, optionally encrypted with another password. The keys are stored in protected memory, so no applications can access them without going through the Microsoft CAPI calls. This code also is FIPS 140-1 level 1 (the best one can get for software cryptography modules) compliant." Does any other OS provide this kind of feature at the OS-level? If so, who? If not, why?

thefickler writes "It seems pointless to seek ideas and feedback if you're going to ignore and delete the opinions you don't like. That's exactly what Dell is doing with its IdeaStorm website, which the company set up to solicit such ideas and feedback. Dell deleted a post linking to an article that criticizes its handling of the 'pre-installed Linux' issue."

iansmith wonders: "I have a new Gateway computer hooked to a flat screen monitor. The problem is the video out is only VGA which does not look as sharp as a DVI output. To help with this, and also to let me run dual displays, I want to add a video card to the machine. In the past I would just grab a standard VGA card for $20, plug it in and go, not needing fancy 3D graphics. I do not want to spend $300 for a gaming video card... does anybody make a video card with DVI out that is not a souped up 3D powerhouse, with a price tag to match? Even worse, all new machines seem to be PCI-Express and so that makes it even less likely I'll find something affordable. I can't even use an old 3D card from home. What would you all suggest I do?"

An anonymous reader asks: "For the last year or so I've been working in 1st line tech support at a small call centre that's part of a much larger outsourcing company and to be honest it's sucking the life out of me, I want change but I don't know what direction to take in order to get out and I really need some advice from others who have made the jump. I suppose what I'd like to know is what kind of jobs one should be looking for coming from technical support with decent knowledge of UNIX, networking, scripting and 'light coding'. Is there any hope for me or will I have to go back to school in order to even have employers look at my resume?"

An anonymous reader asks: "I'm fresh out of high school and interested in getting a job in networking. One option is a degree in networking, the alternative I've considered is just getting certificates (CCNA/P, A+, MCSA). A large factor in my decision is which route is most likely to land a secure and well-paid full time job. I'm located in Melbourne, Australia and I don't have any local contacts in the industry who can advise me, and so was hoping some other Australian (or international) readers could share their knowledge and experience with these issues."